What do you think of the oil shade in the Rocky Mountains?

Question

i read that there is 2 trillion tons of oil shade under the Rocky's and that the gov. is purchasing the land there. have you heard this, i just resently heard this.
do you think that it is wise to tap into this oil? why or why not?

i did mean shale... sorry about that...

Answer 1

Nope! Not wise. It still keeps us dependant on oil and does not address the issue of using other sources of fuel (like corn or sugar, for example).

The other major factor is cost. I'm not sure of the exact ratio, but I seem to recall hearing that extracting oil from the shale in the Rocky's is about 3x more expensive than pulling it from the sand in the Middle East (or the Gulf, or Alaska, etc.).

Answer 2

From Wikipedia:
The United States has the largest known concentration of oil shale in the world, according to the Bureau of Land Management and holds an estimated 800 gigabarrels of recoverable oil, enough to meet U.S. demand for oil at current levels for 110 years. Oil shale is developable given high enough oil prices, and the technology for converting oil shale to oil has been known since the middle ages.

However, the main constraint on oil shale development is probably going to be that Albertan oil sands are only about half as expensive to produce, and the US has full access to oil sands production under the North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA. In addition, there are environmental concerns about oil shale development. The oil shale areas are semi-arid, in which mine scars last for centuries, and are at the headwaters of several important rivers, notably the Powder River in a region in which water rights are very important. By contrast, the Alberta oil sands are in a largely uninhabited boreal forest that is periodically destroyed by forest fires, and the rivers are very large and flow into the Arctic Ocean. As a result, the oil shales are probably not going to see development until oil sands production is well underway.

Saudi Arabia only has 262 billion barrels of oil (262 gigabarrels) in proven reserves.

As to the govt owning it--it already owns alot of the oil shale lands since it is public land. All of it no doubt is under lease either from the govt or from private land owners; Chevron is one big player looking at oil shale and has done some prelimary extraction testing.

Answer 3

I'm sure there is plenty of shade in the Rockies. But,I think you mean shale. Yes it is wise to get it from our own natural resources,but the tree huggers and frog kissers will stop it. I love trees and frogs,but these "environmentalists are hurting our country on a large scale. If the majority of the people don't speak up,we are in for trouble.

Answer 4

Oil isn't from dinosaurs. The earth is making oil each and every of the time. i have not heard about the oil below the rocky mountains. that query signifies that you have not considered those mountains, they are SO massive! we will drop oil as a accessible source, and oil will be inappropriate, purely as buggy whips and buggy wheels. the following it to the destiny

Answer 5

There is so much oil in that Oil Shale that in ten years the price of gas is estimated to be around $1.00 a gallon. (If we actually drilled it.)

The Democrats do not want cheap gas. They will never allow us to drill in that shale, just like they won't allow us to drill in Anwar or off-shore.

Answer 6

yes. We need to be independent of Middle East oil no matter how we do it!